We all know how the IT industry loves its buzzwords – and how the current buzzword becomes a bandwagon, used to rebrand all sorts of products that it doesn’t really apply to. "Cloud computing" is a victim of this trend, with many "cloud" solutions really being old fashioned hosting services.

Hosting has its advantages, of course: moving your IT systems off site to a secure data centre where they’ll be managed by experts can result in more reliable IT at lower cost and with less management effort. But hosting merely moves the same issues to somewhere else. It doesn’t change the game in the way that a true cloud computing solution does.

Cloud computing isn’t just about changing practices in the IT department. It’s about allowing your entire business to work differently, by making it easier for staff to collaborate and innovate. Genuine shared services like Google Apps for Business allow users to work together more easily and more efficiently: with applications like Google Docs, you can hold brainstorming sessions where everyone can look at the same document and see notes and comments from others even if they’re based in different offices, different companies or even on different continents.

Our clients regularly tell us that this is the real benefit of cloud computing. It’s a shame that the confusion in the market over "cloud solutions" seems to be preventing many businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, from taking advantage of this genuine shift in how IT can be exploited.